Forget everything you have assumed about Handbagged, Moira Buffini’s marvelous play about Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. It is different, and better, than that. Here, consider: Our current Chief Magistrate makes people uncomfortable with his insulting and divisive rhetoric, but what if we had a leader who was all that, and actually […]
Archives for February 2018
La Foto (A Selfie Affair) at GALA Hispanic Theatre (review)
The Internet, cell phones, and photoshopping are not only for the young, and the narcissism they engender is not only the provenance of millennials. The most refreshing thing about Gustavo Ott’s La Foto: A Selfie Affair is that the subjects of both the titular snapshot and the social media-age fallout that follows it are grown […]
2018 Helen Hayes nominees announced. In the Heights gets most nods for two companies
The 2018 Helen Hayes Awards nominations were announced Monday night by theatreWashington. Round House Theatre was the most nominated company with 22 nominations. The most nominated production with the Spanish language production of In the Heights garnering 18 nominations for GALA Hispanic Theatre.
Red Velvet, the real life story of actor Ira Aldridge at Chesapeake Shakespeare (review)
In the early 19th century, Ira Aldridge, an African American actor and playwright, was performing on European stages. A fraction of Aldridge’s miraculous story is portrayed in director Shirley Basfield Dunlap’s wonderful adaptation of Lolita Chakrabarti’s play, Red Velvet at the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company in Baltimore, MD.
Kennedy Center’s family friendly Digging Up Dessa (review)
Laura Schellhardt’s Digging Up Dessa tell the story of a troubled teenager who copes with a family tragedy through her interest in fossils. This world premiere production, commissioned by the Kennedy Center as part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, stretches the boundaries of family theater to offer a powerful and educational story.
Review: It’s the Rest of the World That Looks So Small at Flying V
Those unfamiliar with the works of Jonathan Coulton are likely to find themselves going down the Google rabbit hole after seeing It’s the Rest of the World That Looks So Small, a theatrical revue celebrating the works of the quirky singer-songwriter.
Today’s war on women reflected in The Trojan Women Project (review)
Playing like variations on the theme of the ancient Greek play The Trojan Woman, Brave Spirits’ The Trojan Women Project faces head-on a number of issues ripped from the headlines and lifelines of today. Instead of the aftermath from the ancient war over Troy, the new battle in question is identified as the War on Women […]
Booker T. Washington’s messages in Character Building resound today (review)
Most of us have heard of Booker T. Washington as the counterpoint to W.E.B. DuBois, one espousing the “safe’ position of newly freed blacks to better themselves through industry and service while the other struck a more aggressive tone demanding higher education opportunities and social equality.
American Ballet Theatre’s delectable Whipped Cream (review)
The Nunes memo, election tampering by Russia, the refugee crisis, mass shootings, harassment and molestation, Olympic doping, North Korean nukes, climate change, fascism, nationalism, racism, terrorism… We interrupt our regularly scheduled dread for Alexei Ratmansky’s Whipped Cream, a ballet about pastries.
Win 2 pairs of tickets to Something Rotten! DCTS weekend ticket giveaway.
Update: This contest has closed. The winners have been notified. Two lucky readers and their guests will have the chance to attend opening night of the smash Broadway musical, Something Rotten!, Tuesday, February 6 at The National Theatre.
Skeleton Crew at Baltimore Center Stage (review)
That a play set in an auto parts stamping factory is part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival is reason enough to see Skeleton Crew, Dominique Morisseau’s fine, emotionally feral play that features two blue collar women who are not just good at their jobs, but so highly skilled they are the only ones who […]
Swan song for DC’s Source Festival, and complete list of festival works 2008 – 2017
Ten years. Eighty-two productions — two hundred thirty-eight, if you count each short production separately. An Osborne Award. A Steinberg honor. Over fifteen hundred artists — and it’s over. Done. Gone. The Source Festival is finished. Next June, the revered 14th Street theater space will be open for other business.